Pueblo shield withdrawn from Paris artifacts auction

PARIS (AP) — A French auction house withdrew a Pueblo shield from a contested sale of Native American artifacts Monday after protests from the United States.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Phil Frayne called it a "small victory in a larger battle" to repatriate tribal artifacts to their original homes. Frayne told The Associated Press that the U.S. government believes the 19th-century shield might have been taken illegally in the 1970s, and so it was withdrawn by Drouot just before the auction Monday.

The sale of the object — a large disc with a colored face in pigment adorned in bird feathers that was estimated to fetch up to 7,000 euros ($7,800) — is now suspended pending further examination. The Pueblo Indians live in the southwestern United States, primarily in the present-day states of New Mexico and Arizona.